People often ask me what it is that I want to do with my life or where I see myself in 5 years. It seems like an innocuous enough of a question. After all, we live in a society where everyone must live out and achieve their version of the “American Dream” whether that looks like being “successful” personally or professionally. 

For most, that looks like picking their dream career and climbing the ladder or finding their soulmate, having 2.5 kids and buying the house with the white picket fence. And many times, it’s both.

We often let these cultural norms shape our framework for our own desires, hopes, and dreams.  

But, what happens to us when our lives aren’t turning out like we thought they would? When we put ourselves in our starry-eyed twenty-something shoes, look at our life today, and realize that it has not turned out quite like we expected? Or even when we evaluate our current situation and we ask ourselves how we got where we are and why we didn’t get the things we wanted?

I’ve been wrestling with God the past few weeks trying to figure out what desires and yearnings are placed in my heart by Him and which are simply my own fabricated yearnings for something that I imagined I wanted or needed.

It’s a painful process to consider that perhaps some of the desires that I have wept over and that have twisted my heart into agonizing shapes, might be things that I have let the world tell me that I should desire. 

It’s also confusing to attempt to discern which of these longings align with God’s plan and intention for me and which are simply musings of my own design. They seem so intimate to my inner being that I can’t imagine giving them up fully to the Lord without holding on to even just a tiny piece for comfort. 

I can feel myself immediately begin to resist the moment I consider it. I don’t even want to entertain the possibility that I would need to let go of these aches of my heart for something different, even though I know it’s often the very thing that is breaking my heart in the moment. 

And yet, I see God on the other side, reaching out His hand toward me, beckoning me to leave everything of the world behind and follow Him. Not because he needs my praise and adoration (though He certainly deserves it), but because I am His and he desires a life of true joy and fulfillment and He knows that is only found with Him. He knows that the worldly desires we cling to will eventually fade into the background of eternity. 

While I am here on this earth and I am distracted by the world and its incessant nagging for my attention, I will daily renew my focus and my gaze to Jesus and take every step that I can toward Him. I know that I will stumble and that I will drift and I will long for the things of the world. But I also know that with each step closer, my desires and longings will fall in tune with Him until one day my walk becomes an exquisite harmony with my Creator all while creating dissonance with the world and those in it.

Will you join me in taking deliberate steps toward him, even if that means leaving behind the intimate desires of your heart and falling out of step with the world around you?